LEV724 We are forbidden to take revenge or bear a grudge. Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto writes that it is very difficult for a person not to take revenge. People are sensitive to humiliation and suffer greatly from it. To a person who was wronged, revenge is sweeter than honey. To go against one's nature and not take revenge when one is able to, but rather to forgo the entire incident takes great strength of character. This is easy only for angels who do not have human attributes and shortcomings. Nevertheless, it is the King's decree; the verse states so explicitly, and needs no interpretation [this verse]. Not only must you lend your possessions to someone who has refused to lend you his, but you must completely forget about the person's refusal. The evil inclination wants the incident to leave its mark, or at least be partially remembered. The evil inclination will tell you that even if you do bestow a favor on someone who refused you, at least do not do so cheerfully or do not assist him too much, or do not become too friendly with him. Therefore, the Torah writes, "Love your fellowman as yourself," literally as yourself, without distinction. (Mesilas Yeshorim, ch. 11). ... We are required to emulate God. Although a person sins and goes against God's will, He still bestows life upon that person. Moreover, at the very moment the person sins, God is endowing him with the ability to move his limbs and thus enables him to transgress! Therefore, if you do someone a favor and that person goes against your wishes, emulate God and continue to perform chesed. (Tomar Dvorah) [Transcriber's note: Author provides discussion of prohibition against revenge and bearing a grudge.]

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LEV725 … the scope of this virtue [i.e., gemiluth chesed] is not limited to free loans, as some believe, but extends through all the good and kind deeds which a person does to another without receiving recompense. One can perform a chesed with his possessions: by lending his livestock, utensils, money or the like. This constitutes the kindness done with one's property, and is so called by Chazal. One might also extend kindness with his person, this latter category being divisible into two classes: kindness towards the living and kindness towards the dead. Towards the living, one extends chesed by welcoming guests into one's house and exerting oneself on their behalf, and by escorting them on their way; by gladdening the groom and his bride; by visiting the sick and by comforting mourners, or by any similar act towards one's neighbor.… Then there is the kindness extended toward the dead: taking out the coffin, helping with all necessary for the burial, acting as a pall bearer, joining the funeral procession, rising to deliver the eulogy, digging the grave and completing the interment. All such acts are included in the topic of gemiluth chesed. (See Sukkah 49b, Rashi there; Rambam: Laws of Mourning, Chap. 14 -- the sources from which our remarks are derived.) They are included in the positive covenant of [this verse]: "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself"--meaning that whatever you would want others to do to you, you should do to others.

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LEV730 Jewish Sexual Responsibility. Today, when casual partners hook up for sex with no apparent strings attached, it may seem naive even to talk of obligations to one another. Yet … questions … still trouble us: What do I have to tell my partner, and does it matter what kind of relationship we have? Jewish traditions emphasize duties, which in turn rest on timeless ideas about our relationships and responsibilities. I want to focus on two such Jewish principles. First, duties toward ourselves flow from the principle that our bodies and lives are the creation and property of the Divine. We do not own our selves, but rather hold and care for them as stewards or custodians. This is why, for example, many Jewish authorities across all denominations forbid smoking cigarettes, since we do not have the right to pollute and to put at grave risk what is not entirely ours. A literal understanding of the source of this duty may suggest a theology that some contemporary Jews do not share. Still, whatever one’s beliefs, the idea that we have a duty to care for and protect ourselves that goes beyond just doing what we want may still resonate. The second Jewish principle I want to highlight is the Golden Rule, first put forward in Leviticus 19:18: “Ve-ahavta l’re’ekha kamokha,” “Love your fellow as yourself.” This makes empathy an obligation and the chief engine of our duties to others. In our deliberations, we must show respect and consideration for others. We are required to put ourselves in the other’s shoes, to think and feel about the impact of our actions. But how should that impact count in our decision-making? And how much? Our specific duties to others derive from the details of our relationships. My obligations towards strangers, neighbors, friends, parents, children, and my spouse may differ in substance and urgency. And in the course of an evolving romantic or sexual relationship, my duties toward the other person also evolve. How then, should we understand these duties toward lovers and sexual partners? If we take the Ve-ahavta seriously, a good starting point might be this: At a minimum, I should treat my partner as I would wish to be treated. I ought, for example, to disclose as much information as I myself would want to have in order to make informed decisions. But this “informed consent” stance does not go far enough. Taken together, the demands of stewardship and empathy generate additional responsibilities--those of protecting and respecting myself and others. Beyond merely being truthful, I should act to avoid my partner’s suffering, even in circumstances in which the partner does not take responsibility for doing so him/herself. If a female partner yearns to go ahead with unprotected sex, it is still the male partner’s duty either to insist on contraception, or to limit activity to sexual acts that cannot get her pregnant. If a potential partner insists he or she does not mind taking the risk, an HIV-positive person likewise still has a duty to insist on using condoms, or to limit their sex to less risky activities. (By Jeffrey Burack)

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LEV732 See [[GEN540]] Genesis 5:1 likeness DORFF-RUTTENBERGSOC 38

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LEV727 (Continued from [[NUM300]] Numbers 27:16 spirits DORFFDRAG 52-3). These classical rabbinic sources also indicate that pluralism is a divine creation; human beings have difficulty imitating it. To achieve the ability to be pluralistic is, in fact, the ultimate ethical and spiritual challenge, according to [Rabbi Simon] Greenberg [1986, “Pluralism and Jewish Education” Religious Education 81 (winter): 19-28. Just as “love your neighbor as yourself” -- which, for Rabbi Akiva, is the underlying principle of all the commandments (Sifra to Leviticus 19:18) -- requires a person to go beyond biologically rooted self-love, pluralism requires a person to escape egocentricity. It is not possible for human beings totally to love their neighbors as themselves, and neither is it possible to be totally pluralistic; we are by nature too self-centered fully to achieve either goal. The tradition, however, prescribes methods to bring us closer to these aims. Many of its directions to gain love of neighbor appear in that same chapter 19 of Leviticus in which the commandment itself appears. The later tradition’s instructions on how to become pluralistic are contained, in part, in the talmudic source quoted earlier describing the debates of Hillel and Shammai [J. Yevamot 1:6 (3b); B. Yevamot 14a-b. Compare also T. Yevamot 1:12]; One must, like Hillel, be affable and humble and teach opinions opposed to one's own, citing them first. (B. Eruvin 13b)

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LEV728 Coming as a climax to a series of injunctions, [this verse] urges upon man a concern for the welfare of his fellow man that approaches the depth and consistency of concern that a normal, spiritually healthy human being has for his own welfare.

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LEV734 THE GOLDEN COMMANDMENT AND THE GOLDEN RULE. No other moral principle is so direct and powerful as the golden rule. In the first century B.C.E., the sage Hillel stated the rule in its negative form, “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto thy neighbor.” (B. Shabbat 31a) A few decades later, Jesus gave it a positive formulation, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” (Matthew 7:12) The Golden Commandment. A sentence found in verse eighteen of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus is the source, for Jews and Christians, of the golden rule. J.H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, Soncino, p.502. The entire verse reads: “Thou shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.” This short Hebrew sentence,וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמֹ֑וךָ “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the source of the golden rule, and I call it the golden commandment. It dates back to at least the sixth century B.C.E. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, Harper and Brothers, pp. 239 ff. What does the phrase “as thyself” in the golden commandment mean? Does it mean loving as much as you love yourself? Or does it mean loving as a person like yourself? A careful translation of the Hebrew text clarifies the issue. The word in question is כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha). Leo Baeck pointed out that כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha) despite the fact that it is usually translated “as thyself close” is not, as we might think, reflective. Baeck translated the phrase, “he is as thou.” Baeck, “The Interrelation of Judaism and Ethics,” Dr. Samuel Schulman Lectures at the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati: 1949, p. 20. Sheldon Blank, Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, makes the same judgment. He understands כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha) to be in a sort of appositive relationship with רעך (re’akha) your neighbor, a person like you. (Letter to Norman Hirsh, April 8, 1972). The comparable uses in the Bible of this prepositional form strongly favored the interpretations of Baeck and Blank. The recently published New English Bible also concurs. It translates the clause in question, “You shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself.” The New English Bible, The Old Testament, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 156. In agreement with Baeck, Blank and the New English Bible, I would translate the golden commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as a person like yourself.” The golden rule with its assumption of humanity similarly thus follows directly from the golden commandment. Hillel and the Golden Rule. It is now clear what Hillel did when he formulated the golden rule: “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto thy neighbor.” Hillel’s rule leaves unsaid what is stated in the golden commandment. Hillel's golden rule does not express the command to love thy neighbor; nor does it state the conviction that the neighbor is a person like yourself. While these assertions remain part of the golden rule, they are unspoken. On the other hand, Hillel made explicit what was implicit in the golden commandment. For if we are commanded to love the neighbor, and, if the neighbor is a person similar to ourselves, then it follows that what is hateful to us will be hateful to him; and we should refrain from doing it. By restating the golden commandments so as to make its consequences explicit, Hillel made it more directly usable in the world of action.

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LEV735 The Torah commands us, "Love your neighbor as yourself". (This verse). Seemingly it would have been enough to command "Love your neighbor"; why "as yourself"? The Torah seems to be telling us that it is impossible to love someone else unless you first love and esteem yourself. Likewise, the love of our neighbor is a prerequisite for effective love and concern for others beyond my community. A person who recognizes his own worth is capable of loving others; someone who loves and cares for members of his own community is able to push out the envelope and extend that love onward. But if a person starts by deciding that he will love all human beings equally, he will find it difficult to love any human being effectively. Universal love is certainly the ideal, but this love is achieved by cultivating brighter and brighter concentric circles of concern.

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LEV729 In his essay about Kierkegaard, Buber notes that the biblical command to love God reads, "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the command to love humans says, "Love your neighbor as one like yourself" [this verse]. The neighbor--the one encountered fairly regularly--is to be loved "as I wish it may be shown to me." Between Man and Man, Smith, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1947) p.66. That this love given to the unique other is to a certain degree self-serving does not revert this I-Thou relationship back to an I-It relation automatically. Rather, this idiosyncratic expression of love expresses both the concrete uniqueness of the loved and lover. Love among humans thus differs in degree. Love between humans and God, however, is a different kind: it is to be done with all one's heart, soul, and might. (See Deuteronomy 6:5. This verse and the following five verses constitute the first of the three paragraphs of the Shema, the watchword of Jewish liturgy and faith). (By Jonathan K. Crane)

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LEV726 "Love your neighbor as yourself" The Torah obligate us to be equally considerate of the property and dignity of others as we are of our own (Rambam Daios 5:3). By speaking or listening to loshon hora a person shows that he does not love the subject, definitely not to the degree that he loves himself. Although a person might be aware of his own faults, he does not want anyone else to speak about them. If someone does relate his faults, he hopes that the listeners will reject what they hear. Anyone who speaks or accepts lashon hora violates this commandment.

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